and their cruelty, and when you think that these amiable qualities are further enhanced by the most arrant cowardice and tempered by no qualities that I can see, except a wonderful industry and great ingenuity, you can form some idea of how odious and contemptible a race the Chinese are. Their attempts to retake the town have been characteristic and often most amusing, though sometimes, when they have had recourse to assassination, rather the rev^erse. Almost every night since the beginning of June they have tried to annoy us by throwing rockets and firing jingalls at us from the heights which command our position on the north, sometimes they fire for an hour or an hour and a half, sometimes for only a quarter of an hour; they have also been constantly attempting to set fire to our buildings and stores, but have never yet succeeded during the last two months in burning a single thing or wounding (with one trifling exception) a single individual within the lines, although their rockets are to a certain extent formidable weapons, having a nasty barbed arrow at the end. They come with considerable force, and if they could only be directed would have done us some harm. Where they have been more successful is where courage is not required, but only treachery and cruelty. They have murdered and mutilated, in three or four instances, solitary individuals who, contrary to orders, have gone outside the lines, and they have in two instances placed in the way of a patrol bags of gunpowder which have been exploded as the patrol passed, and in each instance severely burnt two men.... But even when acts like these are successful these wretched people dare not come out and attack you openly, but run away... and leave you to carry off your wounded unmolested. We have often observed from our walls at night numerous lights moving about in the country in all directions, which we have since ascertained to be part of a system for frightening us and keeping us on the alert. They have turned out to be lanthorns carried on bamboos by country people paid for the purpose, who, by constantly moving about on the different footpaths, were intended to represent the movements of large bodies of troops advancing to attack the town. On the 20th July their grand attack took place at about half-past 9 p.m. The country was lighted up all round with clusters of lights intended to represent large masses of troops threatening us in every direction. It really looked very pretty. And then the town was suddenly set on fire in seven or eight different places; the lights were intended to divert our attention and induce us to fire upon them, while the real enemy were much nearer — the fires were intended to draw us into the town to put them out, when, as their proclamation said, they could rush into our deserted lines and easily take them. At the same time a heavy fire of rockets and jingalls was opened upon us from all sides, which lasted without interruption till daybreak; to this we replied with mortars and howitzers. At daybreak they climbed up on the walls between our lines, and there, on the rampart, they lighted a " stink pot " and began dancing a sort of war dance round it, not calculating that they were within rifle shot. But when the ballet was disturbed by a few shots from the lines they disappeared in a moment over the wall, and were never seen again. Another batch of these idiots in large numbers approached one of the gates which flanked the wall, and where a howitzer was in position. These people were more addicted to music than dancing, for they were preceded by a band of music uttering the most discordant sounds and accompanied by the yells and hooting of those that followed. The serenade had a more tragical finale than the ballet, for we discharged a shower of grape into the very midst of them — the most perfect silence followed, and so ended the attempt of the Chinese to retake the city of Canton by frightening us out of it. They lost about 200 men.
1858] SEVERE STRICTURES 225